To think companies will put out products that we consume intoour bodies that do not contain the ingredients listed on thecan. Not quite the pet food disaster that happened to animals,but it is getting closer.

Like i tell others, until babies die from baby food, no onewill string the company owners up to the nearest tree.

Does anyone remember the episode of Seinfeld were the low fat yogurt wasn't low fat at all and the characters kept gaining weight. I say we put the Soup Nazi in charge of the FDA. He'd clean things up.

Really, I remember quite good the glass in baby food (company was Gerber) in the late '80's and early '90's. I was still little back then and living in Europe, and even there we had reports of glass shards in baby food. Gerber seemed to try covering it up, but there were hundreds of reports in multiple COUNTRIES, and although the FDA said they didn't found any fractions harmful to babies, I believe that there was some heavy lobbying going on. But now we seemed to have forgotten all about it.

Ascorbic acid is not stable in solution. (particularly with other solutes present as in soft drinks or juices, carbonation in particular will be a problem). The majority of orange and apple juice distributors spike extra ascorbic acid into their juices to account for this in order to provide a significant percentage of the recommended daily intake (RDI) in a single serving.So the question is, how long were these kids Ribena samples on the shelf before they purchased them? They might very well have had the a

While it's true that the initial tip-off came from two high-schoolers, their results were confirmed by Commerce Commision testing. One can safely assume that the confirmatory tests were conducted under controlled conditions in an accredited laboratory. Which is why GSK copped the fine & has been trying to limit damage ever since.

Perhaps it is high time for random testing of all products available for human consumption. Where faults are found, suitable prison terms can be handed out to the executives responsible. That a couple of high school students found the fault is a even greater black mark against the government of those countries.

How the hell is a consumer meant to survive in this era of corporate lies, when the governments of the day do absolutely nothing to ensure the products on the shelves actually adhere to the claims o

While it's expected that advertisers lie, there is a difference between lying about hard facts and more, well, ephemeral claims. If an advertiser says "our laundry detergent is great", that's an ephemeral claim; you may dispute it, but there is no objective interpretation of what "great" means, so the advertiser is off the hook.FWIW, GSK probably could've gotten off the hook if there had been *some* vitamin C in the drink, too - "high in vitamin C" is also a rather ephemeral claim insofar as that it's not c

the post above is not a troll.. this is really old! i've even read it on my local dailies, and my local food sciences body has just reassured everyone that GSK's ribena drink *is* indeed rich in vitamin C [channelnewsasia.com] (at least in Singapore, because we get stuff made in either Malaysia or the Philipines)..

It's not trolling to point out that this was news at least 10 days ago. The Age in Melbourne last updated their story [theage.com.au] on May 21, though Google indexed it there [google.com.au] on the 20th.

The quality of moderation has been on the decline as of late. Like the guy above who pointed this out, he was modded "Offtopic." When an article is posted, commenting about the article is on-topic EVEN when it's not commentary that you personally like. Anyone should be able to figure this out. It is so obvious I can't believe it has to be explained to anyone with mod points.

Mods also need to figure out that anyone who vehemently disagrees is not "Flamebait" unless their primary purpose is to insult. But if they are using something resembling facts and logic, even if they're not G-rated nice, it's not flamebait.

For this reason I am almost harsh when meta-moderating, which I do anytime the opportunity comes up. I am tired of this shit; shitty moderation is how you ruin a site like this and because it doesn't happen all at once and in-your-face but happens gradually over time, people don't see it this way.

I fully expect to be modded Offtopic or Troll or Flamebait for "daring" to (again) call bullshit when I see it. My Karma is sitting at "Excellent" so do your worst and prove me right.

Plot summary of new movie: In "Erin Brockovich and the Operating System of Doom", Erin analyses Windows Vista and discovers it contains 98% hype and only 1% new usability. Soon, hired goons pursue her, trying to run her car off the road. A muscular Linus Torvalds, played by Vin Diesel, parachutes down unexpectedly and drops into her convertible, taking the wheel to perform spectacular stunt driving to evade the pursuers and their Stinger missiles. However, Linus and Erin are later captured and brought to the secret Washington state underground headquarters of an evil software magnate. He rocks back and forth in his chair as he strokes a white cat and boasts of his plans for world conquest through restrictive licensing and patent portfolios, and an alliance with the RIAA. In the end, Linus and Erin escape after Linus crashes the villains's servers by massively downloading emo music. In the closing scene, a massive volcanic explosion destroys Redmond because Linus has also rigged Windows Genuine Advantage to detonate every PC on campus at the same time.

No animals were harmed in the making of this movie. Directed by Jack Thompson.

Comeuppance? Just desserts? Yeah, a $200,000 fine. It'll take them minutes, maybe even hours to make such a huge sum of money back. I'm sure that the next time they even think about deliberately lying to the public for decades upon decades, that fine will make them think twice!

This is a great example of why science should be taken out of highschools and substituted with bible study. We don't need our young people gettin' all booksmart and thinkin' they dun got themselves better than all'us in the bible belt of jebus.

"and ordered to run newspaper ads admitting that some of their drinks contain no Vitamin C"
This is far more damaging to them than a 200k fine. Its like virtually stick them in the stocks and publically embarassing them.
I wish more laws resulted in this for companies rather than simple fines.

Probably because chemical testing of soft drinks, while something that readily comes to mind, isn't actually likely to be done. The consumer product safety commission or whatever, relies on certified statements of contents and penalties if they are in fact incorrect. The public trusts the consumer watchdog.Real chemists have better things to do with their time in most cases, and the general public doesn't have the skill...so really, the high school kids are perfectly primed to discover this sort of thing. T

I heard an interview with one of the girls. When they first tried to contact the company, they were stonewalled so they started contacting other people and the next thing they knew was they were on the international news.

For a company to ignore even fourteen year olds and hope they will just go away is really dumb. Better to deal with the problem before it gets big.

Anyway, what I understood the company to have said was something like: "The berries that this product is made from have more vitamin C than orange juice." The problem being, of course, that none of the vitamin C made it into the product.

They've been selling Ribena for decades under the advertising that it was high in vitamin C. Hell, my grandma used to tell us to drink it. So unless this is a new zealand local recipe thats at fault, i'm sorry, but an inconsequential fine and an apology in a newspaper in a country of 4.1m people really isn't enough - they've been deceiving the purchasing public in several countries for a long time.

They've been selling Ribena for decades under the advertising that it was high in vitamin C. Hell, my grandma used to tell us to drink it.

Now the other side of the coin is that Vitamin C is one of the most overhyped vitamins ever. Small amounts are neccessary for the production of healthy tissue, and that's about it. There is no medical evidence that it helps prevent or cure colds, etc. And a balanced diet provides more than enough Vitamin C.

Now the other side of the coin is that Vitamin C is one of the most overhyped vitamins ever. Small amounts are neccessary for the production of healthy tissue, and that's about it. There is no medical evidence that it helps prevent or cure colds, etc. And a balanced diet provides more than enough Vitamin C.

That depends entirely on your definition of "enough". The USRDA of 60mg a day is just enough to prevent scurvy. The problem with vitamin C is that because it isn't a patentable drug, very little research is done beyond the occasional study of the classic wive's tales about it curing colds and such. When you look at the animal kingdom and vitamin C, you can't help but question the 60mg USRDA. Most animals produce their own vitamin C, and only a very few do not. The biological process for making vitamin C from glucose requires four enzymes. Primates (which includes us) share a damaged gene for producing the fourth enzyme. We have the other three, but because we lack the fourth, the incomplete product of the third enzyme is simply broken down and recycled. Only primates, guinea pigs, red vented bulbul birds, channel catfish, and Indian fruit-eating bats require dietary vitamin C--- and in all cases this is traceable to a genetic mutation breaking the enzyme chain that originally allowed them to produce it from glucose. So the question then becomes, "how much vitamin C would we be producing internally if the enzyme chain were intact?" Well, an examination of vitamin C producing mammals indicates that a healthy animal produces and average of anywhere from 50 to 300mg per kg per day, and an animal with a serious illness will generate anywhere from 10 to 50 times that amount. Even taking the low average, it sure seems like a 150kg man should be getting 7500mg per day rather than 90mg, and that doesn't even take into account how you'd need to take 15000mg orally to equal 7500mg self-produced because the digestive system destroys half of it in the absorption process.

See, before we even get to the possible benefits of vitamin C, we already have good reason to believe 90mg/day is an unnaturally low number. We, as a species, suffer from hypoascorbia due to a genetic defect. The fact that it hasn't killed us doesn't mean it's healthy. Not all mutations are good. If vitamin C is so inconsequential, why did all animal life evolve to produce so much of it?

Dunbal>>> "There is no medical evidence that it helps prevent or cure colds, etc."The BBC reported a year or more ago that the latest research suggests that supplements can reduce the duration of a cold once you've got it but don't do anything for prevention - my current use of Vit.C follows this, I take on orange juice and citrus fruit when I have a cold and occassionally even have tablets.

Member of the Finnish DOH and an epidemiology expert >>>"Duration of cold episodes that occurred dur

Rumours also abound over the amount of cocaine in 'coke'. There may be no mountains or dew in Mountain Dew and no pepper in Dr Pepper. The manufacturers of the French beverage Pschitt [pschitt.fr] were unavailable for comment.

Basically in the early 1990's Ribena corporation realized that their profits were declining to the soda giant Schweppes, and because of all the money they wasted on ads with a black man dressed in purple who squeezed Ribena drinks, who's catchphase was "Ribena. Squeeze it."
They discovered that Ribena was only ever consumed when force-fed to children by parents, or to OAPs by their caretakers; no-one was drinking it out of their own free will anymore.

When Schweppes began hinting that they were developing their own water flavoring syrup which wouldn't taste like dentist mouth-wash Ribena corp adopted a policy of aggressively closing the target market.

This is why Ribena is marketed as a teeth friendly drink, containing your daily vitamin-C requirement; Ribena want to give as many children ruined smiles and scurvy as possible. They hope that no-one will notice only Ribena drinkers are getting scurvy, and thus that more people will start drinking vitamin-C rich Ribena in an effort to combat the ensuing scurvy plague.

Yes, but how much did they actually make by not including the vitamin C? 7mg of ascorbic acid costs a tiny fraction of a cent. Even in high quantities of sale, I doubt they saved anywhere near what this is costing them.

What amazes me is how they found out the amount vitamin C in a product. I was pretty good in science when I was in Gr. 10, but I still have no idea how to find out the amount of vitamin C in a product.Any ideas?

Vitamin C is destroyed when it is exposed to air. When fruit is turned into juice it is always exposed to air. Most fruit juices you buy from the supermarket that do have vitamin c, it is usually added to the juice just prior to bottling. So it is not entirely unexpected Ribena has little vitamin c content. However that does not make it right to mislead consumers.
The Commerce Commission fined GlaxoSmithKline only $200k, basically to cover court costs etc, but let the consumers decide the real fine to GlaxoSmithKline by making them take out the advertisements. So it is up to you who are reading this to determine if you are going to fine GlaxoSmithKline by not purchasing their product.
More alarming to me is that small bottles of sparkling Ribena contain very little if any vitamin C, but they do contain 11 teaspoons of sugar, which is 40% more than a bottle of Coke. This is what we all feed our children! Not any more.

There's this new drink called Orange Juice that claims to have even more Vitamin C. Scientists call it a break through in food science.
There was a point were food scientist stopped producing useful foods like orange juice, peanut butter, and cornflakes, and started making consumers feel better about eating crap. I think it occurred about when the US became the fattest nation on Earth.
PS. I like to think of Coke Zero as a tastier Diet Coke rather than a healthier Coke Classic. None of them are good for you, but two have fewer calories.

There was a point were food scientist stopped producing useful foods like orange juice

I'd say that time was somewhere BEFORE the production of orange juice. Orange juice is a sugary drink. Yes, it's fruit sugar, but it's still sugar. It's far and away a less beneficial drink than water. And drinking a glass of OJ is not the same as eating an orange, no matter what the OJ producers have tried to make people think. A very small glass of OJ a day is ok, but you'll never hear the OJ industry suggesting you

There's this new drink called Orange Juice that claims to have even more Vitamin C. Scientists call it a break through in food science.

Are you saying orange juice is more healthy that diet soda? I disagree. Juice is extremely sugary. It does have vitamins, which is nice if you happen to be deficient which most people aren't. Fat and sugar are our biggest problems now.

About 10% of ingested aspartame (by weight) is converted to methanol, which turns into formaldehyde. Our bodies can handle small quantities of formaldehyde, but it's definitely not good for us.
About 40% of it is converted to aspartic acid. Aspartic acid is tolerated at low levels, but if it spikes to high levels (as it does when aspartame is consumed and absorbed quickly, as in a beverage) it is an excitotoxin [wikipedia.org], potentially causing nerve and brain cell damage.
Relat

and for them, we can have either a. your holier than thou scorn at their lack of willpower. or b. aspartame

think of aspartame as methadone for the heroin that is sugar, and accept that some humpty dumpties need it, and all of the evils of aspartame you describe is still less evil than continuing to consume sugar

Oh, so now you're changing the debate from "aspartame is harmless" to "aspartame is better than nothing for those that can't control their cravings". Well, that's not true either. It's not a binary choice. Take, for example, stevia [wikipedia.org]. Totally natural, non-carbohydrate sweetener. Currently it's not permitted to be used or sold in the US as anything but a "dietary supplement". Why? It's not patentable. The artificial sweetener industry leaned on the FDA to keep it from killing their cash cow, patented, chem la

sugar substitutes trick the body into thinking it is getting something sweet and therefor only continue the typical sweet-tooth addiction. Also, apparently there is quite a controversy [wikipedia.org] over the health risks of aspartame, with things like lymphoma and brain tumours being brought up. That's fun!

So you can either maintain your craving for sweets and guzzle large amounts of possible carcinogens to get your fix, slip back into excessive sugar usage, or perhaps GET OFF THE SWEETS.

No problem; just don't call it "safe". There is no need to whitewash it. It may or may not be preferable, and it may or may not be safe. You pretty glibly dismissed any possible health concerns related to its usage there, which is what I objected to.

Aspartame increases muscle tension since it contains phenyl-alanine and some people are extremely sensitive to it. It is probably a leading cause of 'arthritis' like 'old age' feeling in people. The muscle tension effect causes stiffness and soreness in the back, neck, knees - any joint with strong muscles attached to it. Simptoms start within a day and takes about 2 weeks to wear off. There is a lot of bunk bandied around about aspartame, with some people claiming that it causes anything from brain cance

as in, the most common source of excess calories in the average person's diet is the trigger for insulin resistance when it happens, which is: the vast majority of the casestherefore, you can say: sugar causes diabetes. fact

you want to be overly legal about it, and think you have a point to make

a proper analogy to this retarded conversation would be you saying that tobacco doesn't cause lung cancer

huh?

your point would be: tobacco, ignited and inhaled through the lungs over a period of time, increases your r

Sugar also doesn't cause obesity - eating more calories than you use causes obesity. You are scaremongering with your comments. Sugar is not the root of all evil. It may well be a statistical contributor to the illnesses you cite, but it definitely doesn't contribute anywhere near as much as "lifestyle" choice. Want to cut your risk of heart disease, strokes and diabetes? Get off your fat arse and do some exercise.

Actually, yes - I think i'd also like to address the implicit assumption that everyone in the world lives in the US. It may come as a surprise to you, but a sedentary lifestyle is actually NOT "the average lifestyle of most people" in the majority of the world.

I'm afraid i don't find your earlier comment very "insightful", particularly in view of this latest addition. It seems that what you're actually saying is that you can feel better about your sedentary lifestyle if you drink aspartame based drinks r

> But the core is, don't exercise to lose weight, you will be disappointed.

If try to lose weight by any other means you'll be a hell of a lot more disappointed. Doesn't matter which way you look at it, if you want to lose weight you're going to have to burn it off. Or have it surgically removed. And assuming your maths is right, 45 mins running per day should see you lose 1 pound of fat per week, or 52 pounds of fat per year. I'd say that was a *very* discernible effect on weight loss. Especially if y

This whole thread is a little absurd, so I had to chime in somewhere. Excercise will definitely have an effect on weight loss. For example, using your numbers, say you run an hour every day. At this rate, keeping your caloric intake constant, you will lose 1.5 pounds a week. This is a pretty healthy loss rate - most doctors will tell you not to lose more than 2 pounds per week. (Aside: I don't think you are likely to actually burn 800 calories for an hours run... probably less.) Note also that exercis

are miniscule compared to the ill effects of excess sugartherefore, yes, coca cola zero is a healthy ALTERNATIVE to regular coca cola

i said, ALTERNATIVE

is coca cola zero healthy? of course not. this is what i said, if you had taken thte time to read my whole 10 second comment:

"the ideal is to stop drinking soft drinks altogether, we both agree to that. but if humpty dumpty is going to have a soft drink no matter what, and wants to choose between regular coke and coca cola zero, i'd rather he be drinking coc

Ever notice how peoples teeth in so called 3rd world / developing countries are better than the west.

HA! I don't think you've ever been in a 3rd world country! Some people in less prosperous counties have very good genetics but their tooth quality fades VERY quickly due to lack of fluoride supplementation and lack of funds for quality dental care as well as lack of good dentists. Organic food is GOOD for you and it probably will keep you healthier in the long run but don't confuse this with good dental h

I wouldn't count TOO much on nature; human's natural lifespan seems to be "long enough to reproduce and raise children", with a high infant mortality rate (and a correspondingly high pregnancy rate too). Civilization is good for some things....

Yes, I am totally smarter than nature. Nature wants me to sleep in the rain and be eaten by wild coyotes. By living in a house where the coyotes can't get me, I have effectively outsmarted nature. SMRT.

Friends from my military base have been deployed to MANY third world countries. Our medical squadron in particular is active in humanitarian relief, and you know what is the most requested operation in most of these villages? That's right, tooth extraction. They know that their teeth will fall out due to rotting at some point in time, so they actually request to have all of their teeth removed. This is true in both Central/South America and Africa. We don't dabble much in the eastern countries, but the

What is in fact amazing about this story is that nobody has ever checked it before, you would expect food safety regulators to actually enforce the mandatorry labels by checking that what is inside them, is inside them.

Not that I ever heard of the drink, is this because the drink is not actually allowed in places were the goverment DOES check the contents of food products?

Why hasn't the NZ goverment found this out before, we know why the US go

(article 1)
"They found Ribena did not contain the advertised level of vitamin C. GlaxoSmithKline didn't reply when the students approached the firm with their findings, so they took their results to a TV show.

Then the commerce commission got involved, leading GlaxoSmithKline to plead guilty to 15 advertising-related charges on Tuesday."

(article 2)

"After attempts to contact Ribena resulted in a brush-off, the duo went to Fair Go. As well as filming the story, the organisation told the girls

It's Ascorbic Acid. Litmus paper would readily indicate it's presence. If they found the drink to be neutral pH, then someone with better equipment can actually verify the amount in the drink. Pretty simple.

After all, we all see how successful the RIAA has been in it's efforts to sue students. Unlike the RIAA, which is an umbrella group, so it you want pop music you have to deal with the devil, GlaxoSmithKline is a highly competitive bussiness, probably spending more on marketing than R&D.

Just look at the GSK work in Africa. They are basically giving away Globorix in a PR campaign to win entry to that market. I seriously doubt such a company would not waste time suing children.

Today, the flavoring is still done with kola nuts and the "spent" coca leaf. In the United States, there is only one plant (in New Jersey) authorized by the Federal Government to grow the coca plant for Coca-Cola syrup manufacture.